THE PROBLEM OF THE FAMILY 717 



the British constitution. The conserving influence of this system 

 must be very considerable. But in the United States the family 

 has no such constitutional position. It has no place either in the 

 constitution of the United States or in the constitutions of the 

 states themselves. We are as democratic in respect to the family as 

 we are regarding the individual. With us the legal protection of 

 the family is unsupported by any political recognition of it. And 

 this difference is characteristic of most European countries. We 

 are marked by a democracy of the family as clearly as we are by 

 a democracy of the individual. And this imposes on us the disad- 

 vantages as well as the advantages of our democracy. I do not 

 think this point has received the serious attention it deserves if, 

 indeed, it has been noticed at all. Certainly this condition would 

 seem to imply that, lacking the advantage of political recognition, 

 the American family should receive unusual care in other ways to 

 insure its integrity and social effectiveness. 



The place of the family in the practical problems of economics and 

 philanthropy will call for much more attention than it has been 

 receiving. It is singular that, though the very word economics 

 means the law of the house, yet the modern science, until within 

 a very recent period, has largely neglected to consider the home as 

 a very serious factor in the science. It is becoming to be understood 

 now, however, that for the mass of mankind the home supplies by far 

 the greater part of the motives for industry and for the accumulation 

 of capital. The home, too, has a great deal to do with the efficiency 

 of both labor and capital. For its training does much to supply 

 those qualities of mind as well as those habits of industry which 

 determine the value of both labor and capital. But the attention 

 of those interested in the problems of capital and labor has not been 

 sufficiently concentrated on this economic value of the home. The 

 business need of an intelligent and advancing home life should have 

 even more attention than it has been getting. The mere search for 

 a laborer of simply industrial efficiency needs to be accompanied by 

 more attention to those influences that make him valuable. Our 

 entire people ought to see more clearly that they cannot afford to 

 convert all the women and children of a family into wage-earners 

 while they reduce thereby the home to a mere place for feeding and 

 sleeping. The rights of the home to its own highest development 

 must not be sacrificed. 



The problem of the housing of the poorer classes should be the 

 subject of much further care and experiment. The provision of a 

 home for a family having an income of at least eight or nine hundred 

 dollars in our largest cities is perhaps in the way of easy solution. 

 But there still remains the more difficult problem of securing a whole- 

 some tenement for the family with a smaller income, or else of 



